I Love You
by stormsandsins
Summary: Words carry so much weight on their own. Three feels like a tonne.


**Author's note**: I wrote this very late last night (ahem, very early this morning) so, while it does make complete sense to me, I'm not sure how it will fare with new eyes. Just know that I'm analysing Chuck's character skin-deep and that I'm taking you through a journey into his life and thoughts. Let me know what you think :)

I got the idea for this from thinking one day about why Chuck got stuck on "I" in 2x01. What went through his head? Why couldn't he get past that word? What was the blockage? I mean, we all know he's scared at that point, but I think it's a _lot_ more complicated than that. C/B aren't just scared to say the words, there's a lifetime of blockage preventing them from admitting the truth out loud.

* * *

**I. LOVE. YOU.**

.

**I.**

Everything he touches is measured by clearly defined levels of ownership. Money speaks volumes and is the only language he's absolutely fluent in. Though he's not actually _the_ one in power – that would be his father – he's always had a taste of it, a taste _for_ it. It will all be his one day, and what do you know… power _is_ seductive. Perhaps that's where Chuck's story begins. Seduction. On _his_ terms.

"You" is an alien term that he cannot even begin to understand; "we" is just as unfathomable and unpalatable. "I", he's learned, reigns supreme over a monarchy that he single-handedly controls. And oh, he knows he's king.

What he touches, he inevitably owns, though it may just as soon be discarded down the bland or used lane of his mind. Nevertheless, the owned know this, and still they come sashaying. It's quite a life, but it's one he's always known.

.

**Love.**

Actually, that's all a lie.

Partnerships are inevitable, a necessity even, in order for kingdoms to remain strong and expand. Alliances must be contracted, ideas must match and be soldered. Bass Industries would never have flourished from the nothingness that Chuck's father had known if he hadn't found partners, investors… friends, perhaps? The weakest links are crushed once good tidings come, so Chuck followed early on in his father's footsteps. Everyone knows connections are essential but not eternal.

Almost a decade later and he's eating his own words because they're total crap and he knows it. One went away and came back changed, one is the reason and some time later everything goes down the crapper when he touches the third.

"You" is a presence that stays unbidden around him even when it's physically gone, and "we" is a damn elephant in the room and he's touched it so many times now it's slowly burning him inside, burning him alive.

"I…"

There's a curious thickness inside of him that prevents him from even thinking anymore beyond the deciphering of what exactly has changed that he can't even think beyond the word that feels hollow and different on his tongue.

"I…"

And he realises he's powerless for the first time in his life: over life, over a person, over his own body. He's speechless and the one thing he touches can't be owned, _shouldn't_ be owned.

_This_ he's never known.

Neither the emptiness when her presence seems to vanish completely from the vicinity.

.

**You.**

But she's a drug and he's never exactly turned down a sip or a puff or two. Reminders, they're merely reminders but they prick and they flicker insistently, and maybe that presence isn't completely gone.

Later, through perhaps the most complete alcohol- and drug-induced shutdown he's ever experienced yet, he's on top of the world and he feels nothing, nothing. For the first time in his life he sees himself clearly: a tiny fleck in a discordant world that can't be owned.

Yet this clarity cannot compare to the next one. Blair touches him in more ways than one, and the coldness that had run deep like fuel through him slowly, ever so slowly thaws. Chuck then says "I'm sorry" but trips over the past implications of the possessive and thinks only about the unspoken "you" in the short statement.

Well, its's a beginning.


End file.
